June 30, 2019 Sunday
Bedtime Story
Christianity in United States
Those idealists in the Congress who thought
that this Act would spell the end of slavery in South would be deeply
disappointed.
The interesting point regarding slavery was
that even though for the Atlantic Slave Trade the most important customers were
the states of the South such as Georgia and the Carolinas it was the states of
the New England that provided all the Slave Ships for it to flourish.
The North was as much a part – albeit
vocally abolitionist – of the continuing slave trade as much as was the South
whose role was more obvious and visible.
There is one strange factor that still
puzzles me and that is one of religion.
If everything else failed to unite the
Divided States of America or as it was building up to by the mid nineteenth
century at least the same common benevolent Christian religion should have
helped to curtail the divisive forces.
After all, United States or at least the
people of it were all homogenous in the religious sense believing in the same
Jesus and reading the gospels of the same King James Version of the Bible.
King James Version of the Bible also known
as KJV was the English translation of the Bible ordered by the King of Scotland
and King of England and Ireland James VI and I in 1604 for the Church of England.
The translation was finally completed and published
after seven long years in 1611 and since then has been described as one of the
most important books of English culture that has both defined it and shaped it.
Most apes living today would not be aware
that Bible was originally written in multiple languages by various people belonging
to different places and time.
The Biblical scholars generally consider
three languages to have mainly contributed in the origin of the Bible as we
know it – Hebrew, Aramaic (of Afro-asiatic language family) and Koine Greek
(Greek of the Roman and early Byzantine Empire).
The religiosity of the Founding Fathers is
evident in that fact that nowhere the Constitution of the United States explicitly
states that “the church and the state needed to be separate”.
The Free Exercise Clause which accompanies
the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States
Constitution merely insists on the following:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
The idea of keeping the state out of the
affairs of the church was – as a matter of historical record in United States –
was stated clearly by the President Thomas Jefferson in an 1802 letter of his
that was addressed to Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut.
In it he had written:
“Believing with you that religion is a
matter which lies solely between Man & His God, that he owes account to
none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of the
government reach actions only & not opinion, I contemplate
with sovereign reverence that act of the
whole American…”
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment